Monthly Archives: January 2010

the President stood in front of a gathering of House Republicans and took questions for more than an hour, urging them to put aside partisanship and work together for the good of the country. MSNBC described it as going straight into “the lion’s den.”

Tell your Senators to do the right thing and pass the Paycheck Fairness Act.

It’s been one year since the signing of the Act that bears my name — the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Because of you and the thousands of supporters like you, workers can bring acts of pay discrimination to court.

But my job isn’t over and neither is yours. Today, women still earn, on average, only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. That’s why for the last year I’ve been traveling the country, fighting for the passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act, the essential companion legislation to the Ledbetter Act. It’s passed the House, but remains stalled in the Senate.

It would empower women to negotiate for equal pay, create stronger incentives for employers to follow the law, and strengthen federal outreach and enforcement efforts. It would also strengthen penalties for equal pay violations — provisions that would have helped me.

In other words, this bill gives teeth to the protections against pay discrimination. And women, who are still shortchanged in the workplace, deserve just that.

Last night in his State of the Union address, President Obama reiterated his commitment to passing “a comprehensive energy and climate bill… because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy.”

With the President’s support, we can win the fight for comprehensive legislation in 2010 — and the first step is making sure that the word gets out about his commitment. That’s why we’ve put together a short video sharing what President Obama said about clean energy and climate in last night’s State of the Union.

We’re already closer to winning this fight than many thought possible. The vast majority of Americans are on our side. The U.S. House already passed a comprehensive bill last summer. Our movement is strong and growing — with over 250,000 handwritten letters to the Senate last year, 55,000 posts on the Repower America Wall, and much more.

And as our video shows, we have a President who understands that a clean energy revolution can create millions of American jobs, reduce our dependence on foreign oil and help keep our planet healthy for future generations.

Now it’s the Senate’s turn. Opposition from the fossil fuel industry is fierce, but we have a campaign plan to win. Together, we can make 2010 the year we begin to Repower America — and the first step is to help spread the word about Obama’s commitment to comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation:

WASHINGTON – Plans for a high-speed rail corridor between Portland and Seattle will receive a boost today when the Transportation Department announces $590 million in funding for the project.

Both Washington and Oregon have bought trains capable of traveling at 125 mph. But because of safety and freight traffic concerns, the trains are limited to 79 mph maximum and are plagued by slowdowns and erratic schedules

The higher speeds may still be years off, but the funding will be used to eliminate bottlenecks in the corridor and improve on-time arrivals.

“Anybody who travels the I-5 corridor in our state knows that we need to find new, efficient options to get commuters and commerce moving,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. “This funding is the opportunity we’ve been waiting for to help make these improvements a reality.”

Murray, chairwoman of the Senate transportation appropriations subcommittee, learned of the funding in a phone call Wednesday from Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

Even though they had sought $1.3 billion, state officials said they were more than pleased with the amount and are already working on an application for the next round of funding.

“If that’s the number, that’s a big chunk,” said Scott Witt, director of the Washington Department of Transportation’s rail and marine program.

Congress provided $8 billion for high-speed rail corridors in the $787 billion stimulus and economic recovery bill it approved almost a year ago. President Barack Obama will travel today to Florida, where he is expected to announce funding for 13 high-speed rail corridors in 31 states.

Since 1994, Washington and Oregon have invested nearly $1.1 billion in the Cascades high-speed rail corridor. State officials said earlier that the federal funding would help pay for needed improvements in an effort to get train speeds to 110 mph.

But Witt said even with the federal funding the trains won’t reach 110 mph. Instead, the money will help the trains better keep to their schedule. About 64 percent of trains on the Portland to Seattle route arrive on time. Witt said that will increase to about 90 percent.

“They will run on time,” he said. “It’s about consistency of service.”

The $590 million is a good start, Witt said. “This is a marathon, not a sprint,” he said. “As the president said, this is a down payment.”

Built in Spain, the Talgo trains are equipped with a suspension system that allows them to lean into curves.

The passenger trains currently share track with freight trains on the BNSF mainline and sometimes face backups. The Amtrak Cascades route between Eugene, Ore., and Seattle had a 64 percent average on-time performance in 2008. The Portland-Seattle line carried 750,000 passengers in 2008, an 82 percent increase over 10 years ago.

Corridor improvements could reduce travel time from Portland to Seattle by almost an hour, from three hours and 25 minutes to two hours and 30 minutes.

The state wants to alleviate the congestion with a 19.2-mile inland “bypass” that runs through South Tacoma, Lakewood, past Fort Lewis and DuPont before rejoining the tracks in the Nisqually area. It’s expected to reduce the Seattle-Portland run by six minutes.

But Lakewood officials have voiced concern over the plan since it was unveiled in 2006. The route will run through neighborhoods and intersect streets where there’s currently no train traffic, except slow-moving freight trains that use it a couple of times a week. Lakewood also won’t get a stop on the Amtrak route.

On Jan. 19, the Lakewood City Council passed a resolution asking the state and federal governments to withhold funding until its concerns are addressed.

“Lakewood has taken issue with the state’s decision to avoid an environmental review for this project in light of serious traffic and safety concerns,” according to the city’s Web site. Lakewood officials say the local fire and school districts plan to issue similar resolutions.

Washington state and California officials have had preliminary discussions about a high-speed rail line between San Diego and Vancouver, B.C., using trains that could travel 200 mph. By some estimates, the corridor could cost between $10 million and $45 million per mile.

Thankfully, the United States has already forgiven Haiti’s past debts and now only gives assistance in the form of grants. We need Haiti’s other creditors – the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and countries like Taiwan and Venezuela – to follow our lead and do the same.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has the power to help make that happen.

Thanks to the women in this room and people all across the country, we worked really hard — and it’s now been more than three years since Congress passed the Affordable Care Act and I signed it into law. It’s been nearly a year since the Supreme Court upheld the law under the Constitution. And, by the way, six months ago, the American people went to the polls and decided to keep going in this direction. So the law is here to stay.

I’ll do everything in my power to make sure nothing like this happens again by holding the responsible parties accountable, by putting in place new checks and new safeguards, and going forward, by making sure that the law is applied as it should be — in a fair and impartial way.

They exemplified the very idea of citizenship — that with our God-given rights come responsibilities and obligations to ourselves and to others. They embodied that idea. That’s the way they died. That’s how we must remember them. And that’s how we must live.